of straw so hung that Lyddy could look
into it and see the patient mother brooding her nestlings. The sight of
her bright eyes, alert for every sign of danger, sent a rush of feeling
through Lyddy's veins that made her long to clasp the little feathered
mother to her own breast.

A sweet gravity and consecration of thought possessed her, and the
pink blossoms falling into her basket were not more delicate than the
rose-colored dreams that flushed her soul.

Anthony put in the last wooden peg, and taking up his violin called,
"Davy, lad, come out and tell me what this means!"

Davy was used to this; from a wee boy he had been asked to paint the
changing landscape of each day, and to put into words his uncle's music.

Lyddy dropped her needle, the birds stopped to listen, and Anthony
played.

"It is this apple orchard in May time," said Davy; "it is the song of
the green things growing, isn't it?"

"What do you say, dear?" asked Anthony, turning to his wife.

Love and hope had made a poet of Lyddy. "I think Davy is right," she
said. "It is a dream of the future, the story of all new and beautiful
things growing out of the old. It is full of the sweetness of present
joy, but there is promise and hope in it besides. It is like the Spring
sitting in the lap of Winter, and holding a baby Summer in her bosom."

Davy did not quite understand this, though he thought it pretty; but
Lyddy's husband did, and when the boy went back to his books, he took
his wife in his arms and kissed her twice,--once for herself, and then
once again.

THE EVENTFUL TRIP OF THE MIDNIGHT CRY.

In the little villages along the Saco River, in the year 1850 or
thereabouts, the arrival and departure of the stage-coach was the one
exciting incident of the day. It did not run on schedule time in those
days, but started from Limington or Saco, as the case might be, at about
or somewhere near a certain hour, and arrived at the other end of the
route whenever it got there. There were no trains to meet (the railway
popularly known as the "York and Yank'em" was not built till 1862); the
roads were occasionally good and generally bad; and thus it was often
dusk, and sometimes late in the evening, when the lumbering vehicle
neared its final destination and drew up to the little post-offices
along the way. However late it might be, the village postmaster had to
be on hand to receive and open the mailbags; after which he distributed
the newspaper